“Bring hither my stool,” says the wife and helpmate, “and give me the new pail of polished cedar. Here is Brown Bossy, patiently waiting to give a cup of milk to Anniki. I will milk her first, and do each of you girls choose a cow. The yearlings will not disturb you.”
She places her stool by the side of the great brown beast; she takes the new milk-pail in her hands; she sits down; she bends forward to begin the milking.
Suddenly a great shout, a whoop, a scream is heard far down the road. It is not the shouting of a lone traveller; it is not the whooping of a home-coming ploughboy; it is not the screaming [[275]]of a frightened woman. The milkmaids hear it and are overcome with terror. Sister Anniki turns to flee through the open gateway.
But the wife and mistress stamps her foot with anger. “How silly!” she cries. “It is only the cry of an owl or the call of a lone wolf in the darkening woods. Get to your milking!”
Her own hand trembles as she reaches for the teat. Quickly the dreadful sound is repeated, deafening the ears, freezing the blood of both mistress and maidens. It is the savage whoop of the slave Kullervo, bidding the beasts perform the dreadful business which he alone has planned. Instantly the broad-horned, mild-eyed creature which has played the part of Brown Bossy becomes a huge bear, grim and terrible; instantly all the milkers are turned to growling beasts; instantly the bright-eyed yearlings resume their proper forms and become fierce wolves snapping and snarling and eager for blood. Oh, the savage uproar! Oh, the terror, brief but indescribable!
The milkmaids with their white aprons and braided hair vanish like snow-flakes in a turbulent flood of waters. The wife and helpmate, she who erstwhile was the Maid of Beauty, is [[276]]swept away in the storm, is swallowed up, and naught but a blood-stained lock of hair remains to tell of her fate. And Anniki, maid of the morning, flees shrieking through the gateway, is seized by cruel jaws, is devoured—no magic skill of hers availing to avert her doom.
Ah, me! that it should be my task to tell of this strange tragedy so brief but terrible! No minstrel’s song can depict that scene so fraught with woe, so horrible to contemplate.
The maddened, hungry wolves ran out of the paddock, out of the farmyard; the hideous bears rushed after them. They ran hither and thither devouring every living thing. Like a destroying flood they invaded the farmhouse, breaking down the doors, overturning the tables and benches, filling every room with their horrid presence. In the kitchen they found the old cook, the wench who had caused this unheard-of disaster. She was praying to Jumala, but Jumala did not save her. In her own chamber Dame Lokka, the best loved of matrons, fell before the pitiless tide. Not one of the household escaped the jaws of the furious beasts. Women and men, children, birds and fowls, dogs and horses, all perished. Even the gardens and [[277]]the fields were overrun and trampled into worthlessness. The once prosperous home of Ilmarinen became in a single night an uninhabited waste.
Ah! if only the master, Ilmarinen, had been there! But what could even he have done in that storm so fierce, so irresistible, so overwhelming? [[278]]